Swordmage (46 page)

The ranks of skeletal warriors seemed to shiver, and the dead ones backed away from their former adversaries and

turned to face north. “Aye, we understand thee,” they answered in their cold, rasping voices. “We go to do thy bidding.” Then they began to march away from the battered bands of humans and dwarves they’d been fighting just a moment ago, old bones clicking like insects, rusted mail squealing and clinking.

The defenders of Hulburg raised a ragged volley of shouts, cries of relief, and calls for help, hundreds of voices babbling once. Several of the men standing near Geran grinned at him and stepped close to slap his back and seize his hand. Then a signal horn blew twice above the din. Geran turned and saw Kara lowering the horn. “Back to the dike-top!” she shouted. “Reform ranks across the road! We aren’t done yet!”

Geran looked back at the stand of trees where he’d met Sergen, just visible through the mists. His cousin climbed up into the saddle of his black destrier and glared in Geran’s direction, though the swordmage doubted that Sergen could actually pick him out in the middle of the warriors around the harmach’s banner. Then Sergen spurred his horse and galloped away to the south, fleeing back toward Hulburg with his guards following. A moment later, the House Veruna soldiers on the left side of the line stepped back from the dike, turned toward the south, and began to march away as well, leaving the battle behind. Geran was sorely tempted to call back some of Aesperus’s skeletons in order to send them after Sergen and the Verunas, but he had no idea how strong a hold he really had over the undead warriors or how much they could hurt the Bloody Skulls.

“Let them go for now, Geran.” Harmach Grigor limped up and set a hand on Geran’s shoulder, following Geran’s gaze with his own. The old lord looked pale and haggard, but a spark of defiance animated his features. “At the moment I’d just as soon let a potential adversary leave the field if he has a mind to. We must concentrate on repelling the Bloody Skulls before we pick another fight.” Grigor watched the Verunas leave and sighed. “Whatever else happens today,

Sergen and House Veruna are finished in Hulburg.”

“I know it, Uncle,” Geran answered. “But I’m afraid of the mischief Sergen might do before he knows it too.”

Grigor nodded. “I am as well, but as Kara said—we aren’t done yet here. How did you gain control over the lich king’s warriors?”

Geran showed him the amulet. “I took this from Sergen. It’s the amulet Aesperus gave to the Verunas in payment for the book he sought.” The mist around him was noticeably lightening now, though he could still hear echoing through the fog the roars of ore warriors, the shrill ring of steel on steel, and the fearful bellows of dimwitted ogres. “I don’t know how many warriors it summons or how long they’ll remain.”

“I suppose we’ll find out.” The old lord smiled. “Well done, Geran.”

The swordmage gripped his uncle’s shoulder then stepped clear. He held out his empty hand and half-closed his eyes, groping through his mind for the arcane symbols he needed for the spell of returning. “Cuilledyrr,” he whispered, and a moment later his Myth Drannan blade came hurtling through the unnatural mist to meet his hand. He’d dropped it when he threw Sergen off his horse, and it was far too valuable a weapon to leave on the battlefield. With his sword in one hand and the amulet in the other, Geran hurried to the old dike and scrambled to the top to see what was going on in the ore ranks.

The cacophony of battle was tremendous, an awful mix of hundreds of savage voices, fell magic, roaring monsters, and more. The eerie fog was too dense for him to see well, but he caught glimpses of fighting a bowshot north of the overgrown dike. The ores were fierce and brave fighters, but even their most bloodthirsty berserkers had little stomach for a battle against an enemy who shrugged off all but the most powerful of blows and simply climbed back to his feet when he was struck to the ground. All around him the surviving Shieldsworn and Ironhammers peered into the mists, trying to judge for themselves how the fighting went, with a

curious mix of relief that they were out of it for the moment and dread of the allies that had turned to their side.

Geran watched for what seemed a long time in the bitter cold. Then he noticed that the amulet in his hand was growing warm. He looked down in surprise and saw that a bright orange gleam had appeared on the ancient copper. “What in the world?” he murmured. The gray mists cloaking the battlefield took on an orange hue and began to thin. The clash of arms from the ore lines faded sharply—and suddenly the morning was full of the Orcish shouts of triumph. As the sun finally climbed above the ragged hills fencing the Winterspear Vale, the ancient amulet quietly crumbled into dust, and the skeletal warriors sank back into the ground.

“Geran! The skeletons!” Kara called.

He looked over at her helplessly. “It’s sunrise,” he told her. “Aesperus must’ve promised them for only one night.”

She nodded once, and her azure eyes flashed in the morning light. “Stand to your arms!” she ordered the Shieldsworn. Then she lowered her helm’s visor, slid down from Dancer’s back, and sent the horse toward the rear with a slap to its rump, taking up her position at the head of the footmen guarding the open spot where the Vale Road pierced the dike. “Stand to!”

The unnatural mists cleared just as quickly as they had come, dissipating like dark dreams forgotten in the morning light. The day brightened swiftly, as if the supernatural fog had never been. Now Geran finally got a good look at the ore horde that faced Hulburg. He could see hundreds of ores lying dead in the disordered battle lines left behind by the skeletons’ attack; the ancient warriors had dealt a heavy blow to the Bloody Skulls, but hadn’t defeated them. The ores looked around as well and saw that their supernatural foes were gone, but that the dike was still held against them—and they began to surge forward in wrath, perhaps mistakenly believing that it was some ploy of the harmach’s that had sent the skeletons of the fallen at them.

“Stand your ground!” Kara shouted, and dozens of

captains and sergeants took up the cry and relayed it down the lines. Grim-faced and determined, the defenders of Hulburg set spears in the ground and held blades and bows at the ready. Then, with a wild chorus of roars, battle cries, curses, and shrill war screams, the warriors of Thar hurled themselves upon Hulburg’s defenders once again.

“Mages and archers—fire at will!” Kara shouted. In answer, shrieking missiles of wizard’s fire, dark flights of arrows, and brilliant bolts of lightning burned awful swaths of devastation through the onrushing warriors. Geran saw that Kara had gathered most of the merchant company wands-for-hire at her command around the gap of the Vale Road, and the mercenary mages took a heavy toll of the attacking ores and ogres. But other spells flew as well: dripping spheres of acid that arced from the back ranks of the ore lines to splatter against the old earthen dike, and black clouds full of whirling red cinders that seared and scoured anything they touched.

Geran shielded himself from a fierce cinder-storm with a word of warding, throwing his arm over his eyes and slashing his sword back and forth to drive away the burning sparks. Searing pinpricks announced places where the burning embers had found their way through his defenses. He hissed and brushed one from his shoulder, nostrils burning with the hot, acrid stink. “Where in the Nine Hells did the ores find wizards to aid them?” he demanded. No one nearby heard him, for they were swearing or praying or shouting in anger or pain at the same time.

The Bloody Skull horde smashed into the failing line of Hulburg’s defenders like a mighty black-armored fist. Geran fought in a bright frenzy, determined to stand his ground, but the rush was irresistible. He was swept back twenty yards in twenty heartbeats, simply carried along in the ore charge even as he slashed at the warriors streaming toward him. Then the whole roaring wave of savages seemed to shudder and slam to a stop. Across the breach the Ironhammer dwarves and Kara’s Shieldsworn linked their shields together in a fortress of steel

and determination, refusing to give any more ground. The Bloody Skull charge became a furious melee that roiled and surged within the breach, a storm tide hammering into a battered coast. Rage though they might, for the moment the ores and ogres were contained, funneled into the narrow space of the road and its gap.

In the crowded field, human mages and ore shamans did terrible work. Furnace blasts of yellow-glowing sparks and seething clouds of green, poisonous vapor washed back and forth among the combatants. A brilliant sphere of crimson light hurtled at Geran and exploded nearby, sending stabbing bolts of red lightning through a band of Ironhammers and Shieldsworn struggling to hold the gap. The swordmage deflected the vicious spell with his enchanted blade, but dwarves and humans all around him fell writhing to the ground. He whirled from side to side, wildly searching for some glimpse of the enemy spellcasters amid the chaos and confusion of the fight—and then he spotted a tall human in black armor, wearing a horned black helm.

“A Warlock Knight,” Geran said softly. That explained much. Ores had little talent for sorcery, but the masters of Vaasa were formidable magic-users. Did they incite the Bloody Skulls against us? the swordmage wondered. Or did they come in answer to the Bloody Skulls’ promises of loot? Either way, the Vaasan mage was a dangerous enemy, shielding the Bloody Skulls from the spells of Hulburg’s defenders and burning down soldier after soldier with cold, inhuman efficiency. Several black-armored Vaasan soldiers stood near their master, guarding him against the fray. Geran frowned—the soldiers would be skillful swordsmen, handpicked as bodyguards. He’d have a hard time getting to the Warlock Knight as long as the swordsmen were on their guard, and he simply didn’t have any more spells or arcane words left to him that could overwhelm them quickly.

A bolt of crimson lightning struck the knot of Vaasans from the side, tearing through the swordsmen. The Warlock

Knight parried the spell with an arcane defense of his own, but several of his guards were down, smoke rising from their burned armor. Geran glanced to his right and saw the tiefling Sarth leading a counterattack from that side of the line. The sorcerer threw bolts of fire and blasts of thunder with reckless abandon, burning down the Bloody Skulls. “Back to Thar with you, vile ones!” he shouted between spells. “There is no victory here for you today!”

It was just the opportunity he was looking for. While the Vaasans turned their attention to Sarth and his barrage of spells, Geran scrambled across the blackened overgrowth and embers of the dike’s face, dodging past battling ores and Hulburgans. He reached the Vaasans and cut down one of the mage’s bodyguards with a single thrust between the shoulder blades. His old mentor, Daried, would not have approved, but this was no contest of skill and honor; this was a fight for survival.

The Vaasan mage blasted Sarth off his feet with a spell that made the ground under the tiefling’s feet slam upward as if struck from below by the hammer of some subterranean titan. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw Geran lunging at him. The Warlock Knight snarled an arcane word and threw up a shield of dazzling blue light that stopped Geran’s point as firmly as if he’d tried to drive his sword into a granite wall. Then he leveled his staff at Geran and hurled an unseen thunderclap back at the swordmage, but Geran deflected the blast with a word in Elvish and a flick of his swordpoint.

“You follow the elven ways!” the mage snarled in frustration.

Geran did not reply, but instead attacked again, trying to find his way around the Vaasans magical defense. His enchanted blade rang and shivered as he struck at the edges of the glowing blue haze protecting the Warlock Knight. He managed to slip the point around the edge and give the Vaasan a nasty cut to the meat of his left arm; the mage cursed in pain and jumped back a step, but he missed his footing and tumbled down the earthwork, rolling to the foot of the hill.

Geran started after him, but several rampaging ogres suddenly swarmed up the embankment in front of him, momentarily hiding the Vaasan mage from him. Geran evaded them, but when he looked again the Vaasan was gone. He’d fled the scene or simply been swept away in the tide of battle.

The ores around him raised a ferocious cheer, and Geran looked up. A large banner waved in the air nearby, a square of mustard yellow marked with the image of a crimson, dripping skull. Below the banner he saw a knot of big ore warriors dressed in fine black mail, each with a painted skull over the heart… and in the center, an ore who wore armor of black plate. That must be Mhurren, Geran realized. The chief of the Bloody Skulls must have tired of watching his assaults stall on the tangled embankment of Lendon’s Dike. He meant to lead his warriors to victory.

The swordmage ran over to the human soldiers nearest him, a number of battered and exhausted Shieldsworn. The soldiers of Hulburg had nothing left to give, but he had to ask it of them anyway. “The banner!” he shouted to them. “We’re going to take the banner! Follow me, lads!”

The Shieldsworn soldiers raised a strong cry and surged toward the ore banner, sliding down the embankment after Geran. A huge, grossly fat ogre strode up to meet him and smashed a hammer with a head the size of an ale barrel down at him, but Geran leaped aside. The monster raised its mighty weapon for another swing, but the swordmage darted in close to its crooked legs and sliced out its hamstring with one long cut. The creature bellowed and fell, its arms flailing, but Geran pressed forward. “To me!” he shouted.

A few yards away he heard another rallying cry—Kara darted into the fray from the other side, cutting her way closer to the banner at the head of another small band of Hulburgans. She had her bow in hand, and its deadly song floated over the roars and shouts of the fighting. She shot down two of the warlord’s Skull Guards, each with an arrow in the heart, and then retreated before a sudden rush from the others, allowing her soldiers to meet them blade to blade. A moment

later she threaded her way back into the fight and shot again, killing the ore who carried the standard. The banner wavered and began to fall before another of the Skull Guards seized it from its dying bearer and raised it aloft again.